A Piece of Cake...Part 1

Really why do we use this saying, "Its a piece of cake".... It means it is going to be easy right?!? Maybe the illustrious 'they' were referring how easy it is to EAT a piece of cake....Not to MAKE one...

Allow me to explain..

My Grandmother is turning 90 this month and we are throwing her a birthday party this weekend. It is such a spectacular milestone and one that I am so happy to be a part of; so when I was asked if I could make the cake I jumped at the opportunity.

I started planning the cake in my head right away. I knew it had to be a lemon cake, Grandma loves lemon, and I wanted to make it marvelous. I deduced that a custard filling and a butter cream icing would be perfect. I also wanted it to look fantastic so I went about learning how to make flowers out of gum paste, which by the way is SO much fun, to decorate the top of the cake with.

So far, so good.

Welcome to reality. Two layer cake that serves 40 people - 4 9x13 cakes...not so bad when you have an oven!!! Mine decided to go out in a shower of pretty little sparks two weeks ago. I actually got to bake the cakes at my moms on the weekend so it should have been clear sailing from here....

Step two - Make a custard filling. Seriously, custard is like cooking 101 and I would like to consider myself at a least a level 102, so why oh why can't I make custard.

I have 3 letters for you A.D.D.

Burnt, over cooked, under cooked you name it I did it. I went through over 4 Lt's of milk trying to make a decent custard filling. ARRRRGGGG

At 5:30 this evening I finally made something resembling a custard filling. Victory.
At 5:45, before running out of the house to go to a meeting, I thought to myself, "I should quickly put the custard layer on the cake so that the cake can get wrapped up and back in the fridge."
At 5:46 I had a meltdown. Literally, the custard was not yet cool enough and or undercooked or something and as I poured it onto the cake is quickly poured itself right back off.

At this point I didn't know weather to laugh or cry. Right now I am laughing but I think in the moment I would have rather cried.

I put the layers together and told myself, "No one will notice that the bottom half of the cake is a gooey custardy mess...."

I would have posted a picture of the sad condition of this cake but my husband, I think recognizing the cake's part in my rapidly declining sanity, had it all cleaned up and put in the fridge by the time I got home from my meeting.

So here I am at 11:00 at night wondering what I am to do with my mess of a cake and I think I am going with plan "A"

Serve it.

Tomorrow I decorate...*Sigh*
I love my Grandma, what can I say.